


Ghost Pranks and Other Supernatural Shenanigans

by Zoe_Nightshade_Rules



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:14:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27312448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoe_Nightshade_Rules/pseuds/Zoe_Nightshade_Rules
Summary: “Ah, no, there was a comment under it,” Thalia clears her throat, embarrassed, “They claimed to be the previous co-owner, they said there's a ghost?”Zoë freezes and turns slowly to face Thalia with an incredulous expression on her face, “Are you asking if the house is haunted?”“Yes?” Thalia suddenly feels like a complete idiot for asking about it and can’t help but try to shrink into herself.
Relationships: Artemis/Zoë Nightshade (Percy Jackson)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21





	Ghost Pranks and Other Supernatural Shenanigans

**Author's Note:**

> I got this idea like 2 days ago, so I haven't had much time to write it, it's not read over or edited, so please forgive any spelling mistakes, I'll go back over it tomorrow. I wasn't able to finish it fully due to a party I'm having tonight, so this is more of an introduction, chapter 2 will come out sometime this week!

Everything is nice and peaceful that night, the neighborhood's porch lights are slowly flickering on and the street lamps are beginning to light up the dark patches in the streets. The families with young children are beginning to wind down and the high schoolers are finally starting on their homework. Crickets sing quietly from the grass and a lone raccoon waddles along the sidewalk in hopes to find something shiny.

The quiet night is broken by high pitched squealing broken up by shouts of ‘ghost!’ and curses. Lights flicker on in the short one-story house, and through the curtains, a disheveled man can be seen running through the house with purple slime dripping down his body. The man grabs his keys from the counter, trailing the purple goo around the wooden floor and leaving a mess for his roommate. 

The man almost runs into the door, frantically shoving the key in the door while throwing glances behind him. The key bounces off the brass doorknob in quiet tinks, quick like a heartbeat. An eerie laugh (read: one of those laughs from the cheesy cartoon films) echoes around the house, followed by slow measured footsteps - definitely solid. A bored-looking woman rounds the corner when the man finally gets the lock undone, pushing the key into the lock and turning it with an easy twist. The door bangs open, slamming it as far open as possible, the hinges creak at the stress and he’s already pushing the screen door open when he looks back. He lets out another squeak, this one much more pitiful than the previous, at the sight of the woman, but calms down ever so slightly, she wasn’t his tormentor.

“I’ve dealt with your haunted house shit for too long, I’m leaving,” He tells her, swinging the screen door open the rest of the way and making a break for it to his car. The purple goo slides down his body, and his bare feet, covered only in socks, squelch, collecting the water from the grass and the wet concrete.

“What about your stuff?” The woman calls from her spot leaning against the door, she has a hint of a smile on her face but is otherwise pretty unemotional about the entire ordeal. Although she thinks she saw tears streaming down her roommates, ex-roommates, face. Behind her, the ‘evil’ laugh turned into a delighted cackle. 

“Keep it, your pet ghost might’ve hau-” He is cut off when he slams the door of his car and speeds out of the almost nonexistent driveway, leaving skid marks in his wake. He almost ran over the raccoon too, it hissed at the truck's retreating figure. The woman winced, the upholstery on the seats was ruined, the slime would never come out. 

The house owner, now in need of a new roommate, sighs, dragging a hand down her face before she turns to her guest, her supernatural guest, raising an eyebrow at the sight of the ghost rolling in the air, literally. Dressed in a simple grey shirt - at least the homeowner thinks it’s grey, the ghost’s entire being is sort of greyscale unless she takes a fully solid form - with a pair of black jeans, the ghost laughs, holding her stomach tightly and taking in deep gulping breath in between laughing spurts.

“Did you have to do that?” She asks.

Thalia approaches the house nervously, her backpack thrown over her shoulder, and clutching a print out of the ad in her clenched fist. She takes in the house, a one-story with a basement, only a few miles away from her school. It is painted a light blue with dark blue roofing, a small front porch, and a one-car garage. There are piles of boxes in the front, some still open, others taped shut, and straining against the load. The windows are covered by heavy curtains despite the bright sunlight and the door is wide open with faint voices traveling through it, though it’s too quiet for her to make anything out. 

Thalia closes the door to her beat-up Honda Accord and walks up the small driveway cautiously, just because the ad seemed legit and they seemed to be in the process of moving their previous roommate out, doesn’t mean she hasn’t heard the scary rumors around craigslist ads. She frowns at some spots in the grass that are stained a vibrant purple and faint impressions of skid marks on the driveway. She continues on the small sidewalk connecting to the driveway, marching up the wooden, slightly creaky, porch steps and stopping in front of the open entrance. 

She knocks loudly on the door, not wanting to walk in unannounced, but the two feminine voices, she can’t make out full sentences but she hears the word ‘gross’ and ‘eww’ multiple times, keeps talking. Thalia fiddles with her bag strap, rocking on her feet and worrying her lip before she makes a decision, she steps into the threshold. She knows how impolite it is, but she has to get to her job soon and she doesn’t know how long this will take. She slips off her shoes on the rug and places her bag near the door, eyes flickering around the fairly open floor plan, and unable to spot anything living. 

Thalia walks through the house quietly, socks sliding a bit on the wood floor as she leaves the front entrance, she glances at the small kitchen connected to the dining room then the half wall and a few stairs that lead to the living room. She heads into the carpeted living room, passing the l-shaped couch, and turns into the small connecting hallways. Three doors greet her with only one open, Thalia tamps down on her curious nature and instead calls out, “Hello?”

The chatter cuts off abruptly and Thalia opens the already open door further, just in time to see a box falling and tumbling down the stairs. The girl stares at it when it splits open on the last step, spilling its contents all over the floor. She has black hair tied back into a sloppy bun with a silver bandana to keep flyaway hair out of her face. She’s wearing a black tank top and jeans with a grey flannel tied around her waist and her eyes are a dark brown like black coffee. 

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!” Thalia goes to apologize, but remains rooted in her spot, she could’ve sword she heard voices just then. 

“You didn’t, you're Thalia?” The girl carrying the boxes up the stairs says, finishing the climb and placing the two boxes she was carrying on the floor with a huff, “You know it’s rude to just enter a house, even if you plan on living in it.”

Thalia laughs awkwardly, watching the girl uncertainty as she walks back down the stairs in order to clean up the mess, “I knocked, but nobody answered and the door was open, so I figured I’d come find you,” Thalia explains, “Oh, right, do you need any help?”

“No, I’ll just put this to the side for now, sorry, I planned on getting everything in my truck before you got here, but my friend isn’t being very helpful,” She waves off before she shoves everything into a corner to deal with later. Thalia winces when she hears something break.

“Is that who you were talking to?” Thalia asks as the girl starts to walk up the stairs again.

The girl doesn’t look at Thalia as she contemplates her answer and Thalia can’t help but feel a chill go through her at the girls weird behavior, “I wasn’t talking to anyone,” She says finally, looking at Thalia with concern as she picks up the boxes she left near her. 

“Right,” Thalia drawls, trailing after the mysterious homeowner as she walks through the house with the boxes and then out to place them with the rest of them.

The girl places the boxes on a pile taller than Thalia before turning to her, a look of shock comes across her face before she seems to remember herself and Thalia assumes she realizes how weird she’d been when her neck colors. 

“Oh gods, silly me, let’s start over, my name is Zoë Nightshade,” Zoë introduces herself, sticking her hand gloves out to shake. 

“Thalia Grace,” Thalia shakes her hand, smiling warmly.

“Of course, sorry about the mess, again, my previous roommate left in a hurry and left all of his stuff to me, I’m was trying to get rid of it before you got here but-”

“Your friend isn’t being very helpful,” Thalia finishes, withdrawing her hand and tucking it back into her pockets.

“No, I guess I already told you about that, I apologize, I’m a little out of it, I haven’t gotten much sleep lately,” Zoë explains while she pulls her gloves off and sticks them into her back pocket. 

“Oh, I completely understand, I’m a college student myself,” Thalia laughs trying to find a middle ground, rocking on her feet again.

“Well, now that introductions are out of the way, would you like a tour?” Zoë offers, already turning to go back inside.

“Uh, before that I’ve got a question about the ad,” Thalia says, jogging a couple of steps to catch up to the girl. 

“If it’s about the rent cost, I can’t lower it, this isn’t a charity,” Zoë sighs, Thalia can’t help but wonder how many people have asked about it for her to immediately jump to the conclusion.

“Ah, no, there was a comment under it,” Thalia clears her throat, embarrassed, “They claimed to be the previous co-owner, they said there's a ghost?”

Zoë freezes and turns slowly to face Thalia with an incredulous expression on her face, “Are you asking if the house is haunted?”

“Yes?” Thalia suddenly feels like a complete idiot for asking about it and can’t help but try to shrink into herself. 

“Then no, the house isn’t haunted, anyway Orion is a complete idiot,” Zoë relaxes, turning back to the house and beckoning Thalia to follow her. 

Thalia leaves the house with the paperwork to fill out in hand and plans to move-in in a week. Along with a slightly uneasy feeling about her new housemate, not a bad feeling, like she wasn’t safe or felt she was about to get murdered, just uncertain, like the girl is hiding something. Just a few of the ways she worded things was weird and how her eyes kept flickering to something behind her but when Thalia would look, nothing would be there. But she was excited anyway, she wouldn’t have to listen to her little brother and his girlfriend go at it like rabbits in heat, she wouldn’t have to sit in on awkward family dinners with half-siblings she didn’t even know. So despite her peculiar roommate, she couldn’t wait to move in.

Thalia stands in her new room with her fists on her hips and surveys the mess. Boxes cover every surface, the walls are bare and the bed only a mattress but her room nonetheless. She knows it will take a few hours yet to unpack everything, reassemble a few other things and make her room look like somebody actually lives there, but she was so tired already. Despite the help from Zoë, who seems much more  _ normal  _ today, it still took an hour to bring everything up and down the stairs. When they finished Zoë apologized and said that she had to head to work, explaining that her boss had given her weird hours that week and she wouldn’t be back until morning. Really, Thalia just wants to collapse onto her mattress and sleep for the next few hours. 

She sighs and opens up her phone, scrolling through her apps until she finds Spotify and clicks on her favorite playlist. She throws the phone on her bed when  _ American Idiot  _ by Green Day starts blasting from the speakers. Thalia reaches into her back pockets and produces a worn pocket knife, tossing it into the air while she contemplates where to start. She sinks to her knees at the nearest box and tears into it, pulling out her folded clothes and starts unpacking. 

She is humming along to her music and putting together her desk when she hears a dull thump from upstairs, she pauses, trying to figure out if it was from her music or not. She sits still for a few seconds, waiting for the creak of footsteps or another sound but nothing comes. Thalia dismisses the sound as a one-off and begins twisting the screwdriver again, attaching the final leg to her workspace. 

A few minutes later, there’s a loud crash, one that definitely did not belong in  _ Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time  _ by Panic! At the Disco. Thalia sets the almost finished desk down and stands up quietly. She silently swears in her head, because of course, the day that she moves in and Zoë isn’t home, somebody breaks in. She walks quickly over to her bed and pauses the music before locating her pocket knife among the flattened cardboard boxes. She leaves her room slowly and walks through the dark hallway - why the fuck hadn’t she turned the lights on when she came down here, it made it ten thousand times scarier. 

She walks up the stairs at a snail's pace, leaning heavily against the right wall with her knife pointed out in front of her and shaking. It doesn’t help that all she can hear is blood rushing at the thump-thump of her heartbeat. Thalia reaches the top of the steps without them making a sound, but when she opens the door, it lets out a groan that seems like the loudest thing in the world in contrast to the quiet house. 

“Hey asshole, leave my shit alone and I won’t call the cops on you!” Thalia yells into the seemingly empty house, she searches the house for the intruder when she gets no response. Not finding anything other than all the books from the bookshelf in the living room on the floor. She grabs her phone from her pocket and quickly dials Zoë’s number, which she’d gotten earlier that day. 

Thalia paces the living room, eyeing the books while she listens to her phone ring, silently pleading Zoë to pick up. 

“Hello?”

“Hey Zoë, this is Thalia by the way, I was putting my room together when I heard a big crash, turns out all your books are on the floor. Has your house ever been robbed before, I looked around but didn’t notice anything was missing, so maybe I scared him off?” Thalia rambles, mentally screaming at herself to shut up because what is coming out of her mind makes no sense. 

“Slow down, let me guess, all the books in my bookshelf fell?” Zoë asks after Thalia hears her excuse herself from her coworkers, Thalia winces, she should’ve just called 911 or something. 

“Yea,” Thalia confirms, crossing her arms and pinching herself under her rib for overreacting. 

“It’s fine, do you know if the garbage truck or something passed? The things are not very stable and dump my stuff on the floor all the time, nobody broke in,” Zoë explains quickly and Thalia gets the mental picture of her waving it off like she did when Thalia first met her. 

“Oh? Oh, right,” Thalia laughs awkwardly.

“Just relax, we’re in a safe neighborhood, you can keep unpacking if you’d like,” Zoë reassures her and Thalia finds herself nodding despite Zoë being unable to see her. After they say their goodbyes, Thalia heads back downstairs, albeit reluctantly, and continues to unpack and there are no more incidents that week.

Little did Thalia know, that was the first of many odd happenings in her new house. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and Kudos make my day and encourage me to keep writing, I've got a big one-shot I'm writing currently, I plan on posting that within a few months. Have a great Halloween and stay safe! I'll have chapter two out in the next few days!


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